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The Kansas City Chiefs and Tampa Bay Buccaneers square off in Super Bowl 55 this coming Sunday at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Florida. The game kicks off Sunday, February 7th at approximately 6:30 p.m. ET and will air on CBS.
The Super Bowl is usually played on a neutral field and get one side designated as the home team and one side designated as the road team. There is nothing complicated about the determination — the league rotates the home team by conference each year. Last year, the AFC Champion Chiefs were deemed the home team while the NFC champion San Francisco 49ers were deemed the road team. This year, the Bucs are designated the home team and the Chiefs are the road team.
Although the NFL designated these assignments, this year is different than any other year in Super Bowl history. This year, the Bucs will become the first NFL team to play in the Super Bowl in their home stadium. The Rams played in Super Bowl XIV at the nearby Rose Bowl and the 49ers played in Super Bowl XIX at nearby Stanford Stadium, but neither was the official home stadium.
This means the Bucs will get to play in their own locker room as the home team. Regardless of this happening at Raymond James, this is pertinent information for two reasons: uniforms and the coin toss.
Uniforms
UPDATE: The Bucs have elected to wear their white jerseys, per ESPN, which means the Chiefs will wear red.
The home team gets to determine which uniforms they will wear for the game. Usually a team sports their traditional home colors, but sometimes the weather will impact it. If a team has a hot weather game coming up at home, they sometimes will wear their road whites to make life a little easier. The Bucs and Chiefs have not yet announced what uniforms they will wear for Super Bowl 55.
Coin toss
The coin toss might be more important. The road team gets to make the call on the coin toss, which means the Chiefs will call the coin toss on February 7th. While it is a mostly 50/50 proposition, getting a chance to defer is a big deal. Tails never fails can be a popular call, so this means the Chiefs will get a chance to decide if that’s the case or if they’re more of a heads type of team.